


silver wedding

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Anniversary, Dancing, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, Party, Romance, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: Nancy and Ned help celebrate his parents' wedding anniversary, and can't help imagining their own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published at my Nancy Drew fic tumblr, nancydrewdiary.

It’s Ned’s parents’ wedding anniversary.

Not just that - it’s a big one. Twenty-five years together. To celebrate, Edith’s sisters throw her and James a party, and they draft Ned and Nancy to help: putting up blue and silver streamers and blowing up balloons, setting up tables in the back yard at Ned’s parents’ house. Hannah’s contribution is an almost infinite supply of petits fours. Nancy wears a blue jersey dress that flutters when she moves, and she serves the punch with a smile.

Then one of Ned’s aunts urges her to go have fun with Ned for a little while, and so she finds him in a group with his cousins, laughing about something, effortlessly handsome in his dark slacks, the sleeves of his button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows. She bumps her shoulder against his arm and his eyes light up when he looks over and sees her.

“Free?”

“For a while. Thought we might take advantage of it.”

She nods toward the designated dance area; the music is mostly songs that were played during his parents’ wedding reception, and some of them are so cheesy that they can’t help chuckling a little. But Ned’s parents look so happy that Nancy melts a little. They are unselfconscious in their affection for each other, and Ned is the same way with her.

They dance, even through the ridiculous songs and moves; they dance close but not too close, and when Nancy feels guilty and reluctantly returns to the punch bowl, no one’s manning it, so she shrugs and returns to Ned as the strings of white lights come on with the dusk.

Afterward, once the party is mostly over and they’ve begun to clean up, Ned’s cousins ask if Nancy and Ned want to join them bar-hopping in the city. Ned’s parents are heading to the lake for the weekend for their own private celebration. Nancy and Ned have nowhere to be in the morning.

But when Ned shrugs and says _next time_ , Nancy follows his lead. Working together, all of them manage to put the back yard and house in order in record time; Ned hugs his parents goodbye and Nancy is the last guest left when Ned closes the door behind his aunt.

“I should probably head home,” she says, like she’s following a script they’ve had memorized for years, but her lips curve up a little when she looks up into his eyes.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and then he reaches for her hand.

It’s too late to head back to her place and she’s too exhausted, and they have the house to themselves. He picks her up and she wraps herself around him, her cheek resting on his shoulder as he carries her up the stairs to his old room.

It’s not the first time they’ve made love, not by far, but when she takes him inside her and he grips her hips and her tongue slips into his mouth, when they join and arch and gasp together, it feels that sweet, that new. He rolls her onto her back and she cries out, feeling wickedly decadent when she doesn’t stifle her sobs and moans of pleasure. No one else is around to hear them, or the rhythmic squeal of the bedsprings as he moves between her thighs.

After, she presses herself to his side and sighs in complete relaxation, both of them naked. He kisses the crown of her head and strokes her back, and she feels his heart slow beneath her breast.

“In twenty-five years,” Ned says softly, “that could be us.”

Her heart skips a beat. “Could be,” she whispers.

“Can be.”

She takes a deep breath and pushes herself up, looking into his eyes, and she sees love and tenderness and a hint of anxiety. She’s long known how he feels about her; he’s long known her reluctance to take that step. This step.

But her reluctance feels like one last childhood fear she hasn’t yet found a way to overcome, and the panic has faded with time, so much that she no longer understands how she ever could have been so afraid.

She leans down and presses a kiss against his lips, her bare chest against his, and he searches her eyes when she pulls back again, a thrill going down her spine as she draws a breath to speak.

“Will be.”


End file.
